64 bit builds

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Revision as of 15:20, 14 October 2012 by Tanstaafl (talk | contribs) (Added WaterFox, Pale Moon)
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You can run a 32 bit version of a Mozilla application using a 64 bit kernel (Windows 7 x64 etc.) though a 64 bit version is frequently preferred in order to increase performance. However, if you had poor performance before (due to lack of memory , poorly configured application etc.) you might not notice the improvement. A 64-bit version will use more memory, so its possible it might even make things worse if you were short of memory.

There aren't any official 64 bit builds of Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey for Windows. 64 bit builds for Mac OSX and Linux are available at http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ .

Unofficial 64 bit builds of Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey for Windows are available at wiki.mozilla-x86-64.com . The Third Party/Unofficial Builds forum has optimized 3rd party builds that may include some 64 bit builds for Windows.

WaterFox and Pale Moon are optimized 64 bit versions of Firefox for Windows. Start64 and Firefox 64 have several 64 bit builds of Firefox (nightly, WaterFox etc.) for several operating systems. Start64 also has 64 bit Thunderbird builds.

Many Linux distros provide their own 64 bit builds of Firefox, Thunderbird, and SeaMonkey in their repositories.

Tracking bugs:

Windows x64
Windows 64 bit builds in Thunderbird
64 bit Windows package for Lightning

Add-ons

Most add-ons don't care what operating system you are using, or whether you are using a 32 bit or 64 bit application.

You can not use a 32 bit build of Lightning with a 64 bit build of Thunderbird or SeaMonkey. There are official 64 bit builds of Lightning available for Linux and OS X but they're for nightly builds. Nightly builds are automated untested builds . Unofficial 64bit builds of Lightning for Linux are available at here. Also look in the contrib subdirectory of the latest release in releases.mozilla.org

The Unity Launcher Integration add-on for Thunderbird used to only support 32bit kernels. Supposedly the latest version also works with 64bit kernels. [1]

The Enigmail add-on supports Linux x86-64 but doesn't support 64 bit OS X.